- From: Provenance Working Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:09:38 +0000
- To: public-prov-wg@w3.org
PROV-ISSUE-62 (about-prov-language): about provenance language [Conceptual Model] http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/62 Raised by: Graham Klyne On product: Conceptual Model Introduction of "characterized entities" - if this is something that really needs to be said, I think it needs to be clarified. I spent some time thinking about these two sentences, trying to work out if they could ever be completely correct, or just not understanding what they are intended to convey: [[ Furthermore, this specification is concerned with characterized entities, that is, entities and their situation in the world, as perceived by their asserters. In the rest of the document, we are concerned with the representation of such entities; their situation in the world will be represented using sets of attributes. ]] Why "characterized entities" as opposed to perceived entities"? What's the important distinction here? The only interpretation I've found that makes sense to me is that the document is concerning itself with entities that are characterized by the values of some bounded set of attributes. But that interpretation, if correct, is not obvious to me from the wording here. "PIL is a language by which representations of the world can be expressed using terms that are drawn from a controlled vocabulary. " I'm not sure how to interpret this. Does this "controlled vocabulary include, for example, numbers? Is this controlled vocabulary expected to be the complete set of terms used in PIL expressions? "These representations are relative to an asserter, and in that sense constitute assertions about the world." What is this trying to say? I think you might mean something like: "These representations are relative to the context of an asserter, and in that sense constitute perceptions about the world." which ties back to the earlier statement about "as perceived by their asserters". "All assertions in PIL SHOULD be interpreted as a record of what has happened, as opposed to what may or will happen." I feel we should find a way to strengthen this SHOULD to a MUST, but comments from earlier discussions make this tricky to get right. Maybe: "All assertions in PIL MUST be interpreted as a record of what has happened or been observed in some context, as opposed to what might happen or potential observations." In this, I am using the reference to a context to provide just enough wiggle-room for description in future or imagined contexts. "This specification does not prescribe the means by which assertions are made, for example on the basis of observations, inferences, or any other means." The phrasing "... assertions are made" here is jarring, if not confusing - I would think that assertions are made in PIL for the purposes of this spec. Suggest "... how assertions are arrived at, ..." "The language introduces a notion of "provenance container", which provides a default scope for assertions." The term "container" here is suggested of a physical or logical encapsulation, which I don't think is meant. How about "provenance context"? [[ ... The model may define additional scoping rules for assertions. Identifiers can safely be used within that scope. Optionally, identifiers can be exported so that they can be used outside their default scope. The language does not prescribe the mechanisms by which identifiers are generated. ]] This spec is describing a data model, *not* a language. It says so at the top. As such I think it's entirely inappropriate to start defining linguistic constructs such as identifiers and scoping. Assuming the actual language used will be RDF, I'm not seeing how what you describe will be possible. "In this specification, when an assertion is defined to refer to another assertion about something, it does so by means of that thing's identifier." I don't understand what this is trying to say.
Received on Friday, 29 July 2011 09:09:43 UTC